Abstract
Water mist fire suppression systems which use relatively small droplets of water with high injection pressure are increasingly being used in wider applications because of its greater efficiency, low flooding damage and low toxicity. However, the performance of the system significantly relies on the water mist characteristics and it requires better understanding of fire suppression mechanism of water mist. In the present study, computational fluid dynamics simulations were carried out to investigate cooling performance of water mist in heated chamber. The gas phase was prepared with natural convection heat transfer model for incompressible ideal case and then the effects of water mist injection characteristics on cooling capabilities were investigated upon the basis of the pre-determined temperature field. For the simulation of water mist behavior, Lagrangian discrete phase model was employed by using a commercial code, FLUENT. Smaller droplet sizes, greater injection angles and higher flow rates provided relatively higher cooling performance.